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07 September 2013

Vern Bullough was born and raised in Salt Lake City. He and his high-school sweetheart, Bonnie Uckerman (1927 - 1996), left the Mormon Church as teenagers in protest against its then exclusion of black people. Bonnie's mother left her family to live with a woman, Berry Berryman. Vern found this fascinating and asked many questions and met their gay and lesbian friends. Vern and Bonnie married in 1947, and had two children.

After being in the US Army, Vern did a BA in history at the University of Utah and an MA and PhD in 1954 at Chicago University, using GI Bill Benefits. He specialized in the Middle Ages and did a dissertation on medical education. He was hired the same year to teach at Youngstown University in Ohio.

Vern and Bonnie became friends with Prince and visited Virginia and his wife Doreen at home. They attended the second meeting of the Hose and Heel Club in 1960. Having published several articles and books on the early history of medicine and nursing, Vern felt that he could look at sex, and published The History of Prostitution in 1964. Working with ONE, Inc, where he came to know Harry
Hay, Jim Kepner and Don Slater, Vern was successful in getting the San Fernando Valley
chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to adopt a policy
of protection of homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals. He was chairman when the local ACLU was very involved in the struggle to desegregate Los Angeles City schools.

In 1965 ONE, Inc split into two competing factions, and Vern Bullough was one of
only two people who were able to maintain working relationships with
both sides. In 1966 the national ACLU adopted a national policy re homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals based on Bullough's draft.

He rode in an early gay
parade in Hollywood in 1966 that Slater organized to demand
that gays be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. Bullough opposed the
war but supported gays' rights to serve in the military. That same year Vern was able to visit West Asia on a Fulbright scholarship. However the trip was marred when his son David was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Jerusalem. The Bulloughs subsequently adopted three
children of different races, two of whom are gay.

Vern allied himself with gay causes, and was a founder of gay caucuses in
the American Historical Association and the American Sociological Association.
He was a charter member of the original Parents, Families, and Friends
of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), which was founded in Los Angeles. He established the
Vern and Bonnie Bullough Collection on Sex and Gender, housed at the
campus' Oviatt Library. He “halfway encouraged” John Brown to do transsexual surgery, as he admits with chagrin.
In 1974 Vern and Bonnie organized a conference in Los Angeles under the auspices of the
Institute for the Study of Human Resources (ISHR, associated with ONE
and sponsored by Reed Erickson) which brought together Virginia Prince, Christine Jorgensen, Zelda Suplee, Laud Humphries, Christopher Isherwood and Evelyn Hooker. The same year he and Bonnie published, The Subordinate Sex, 1974. This was his first book sponsored by the millionaire trans man Reed Erickson, and the one in which he made the claim that Islam is a sex-positive religion.

In 1976
Vern Bullough, Dorr Legg and other members of ONE, Inc finally published their An Annotated Bibliography of Homosexuality: In Two Volumes, which also contained the largest bibliography of transvestite and transsexual material available at that time. His Sexual Variance of the same year was again sponsored by Reed Erickson. It contains many examples of gay and transgendered behavior showing that it differs across time and between cultures.

Bonnie progressed from sociology instructor to professor of nursing, chair of primary care and coordinator of the graduate nursing program.

Later that year Vern and Bonnie Bullough moved to the State University of New York at Buffalo where Vern was dean
of natural and social sciences, and Bonnie was dean of nursing. In 1981 Vern earned a Batchelor of Science in Nursing from California State University, Long Beach, and proudly put his Registered Nurse license number on his CV. In 1992 he was honored by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and was their chairman 1995-6. He was also on the editorial board of Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia.

In 1993 Vern and Bonnie Bullough returned to Los Angeles after their retirement. Vern again taught at Northridge as an adjunct professor until 2003. That year Vern and Bonnie published Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender, specifically on trans people and their doctors. In the chapter “Transsexualism” they discuss (only) 6 known transsexuals: Lili Elbe (surgery 1931), Alan Hart (1918), Roberta Cowell (1951), Michael Dillon (1949), Christine Jorgensen (1953) and Jan Morris (1972)– none of whom, incidentally, had a male partner. He does also mention Coccinelle (1958),
who had three husbands after her operation, but he puts her in the
“Drag Queens and Cross Dressing on the Stage” chapter rather than the
“Transsexualism” chapter, and omits all mention of her husbands. There
is no mention at all of April Ashley
(1960) whose divorce by her husband set such an unfortunate precedent,
but then she could not be mentioned without admitting that she had a
husband. Almost all the people that I mentioned in a previous
paragraph are still apparently unknown to the Bulloughs, as are the
extra people who were in the news in the additional 14 years. Of those mentioned, only Jan
Morris and Coccinelle transitioned later than Jorgensen in 1953. Thus in
the 40 years prior to writing their book, the Bulloughs seem to have
become aware of only two more transsexuals, although they knew of
Michael Dillon from Liz Hodgkinson's
1989 biography rather than from the media kerfuffle in 1958. In the
“Organized Transvestism” chapter, again, only his friend Virginia Prince
is mentioned, and the equally important work by Louise Lawrence, José Sarria and Sylvia Rivera is totally ignored. And one more thing: The Bulloughs ignore completely the organizations
for female-to-males. Surely they would not omit Reed Erickson, his
former sponsor? Actually they do. But the next major ftm organizer
is Louis Sullivan.
Okay, he is briefly mentioned (p306) as a female cross-dresser who
finds men's clothing erotic. They suppress the fact that he
transitioned to male, and – this fits the pattern - that he became a man
to be a gay man, a role that he tragically embraced to the point of
dying of Aids.

Bonnie Bullough died in 1996, just before the publication of the anthology Gender Blending edited by herself, Vern and James Elias. Vern quickly re-married.

In 2004 Vern encouraged Richard Docter to write and publish his biography of Virginia Prince and provided a Preface.
Helen Boyd asked
Bullough to comment on rumors that he must be a cross-dresser because of
his strong interests in the transgender community. Others assumed that
he was gay and were disappointed to learn that he was an avowed
heterosexual.

"If I was everything I wrote books about, I would probably
be a very screwed-up person," he said, mentioning his works on
sadomasochism, pedophilia, masturbation and other forms of sexual
expression. I consider myself a sex researcher, and I will admit to
having a strong interest in the way people sexually express themselves."

In his final book with Ariadne Kane, Crossing Sexual Boundaries, 2006, Bullough's Introduction again - as we now expect - fails to mention any transsexuals with male lovers/husbands, as does the book itself which contains 18 mtf and 2 ftm autobiographical essays, but not a single one in which the person has a male spouse. As Kane has said: "We tried to involve contributors from all sectors of the gender spectrum, including androgynes, non operative and post-operative, individuals, spouses and close friends of ‘T’ people" --- and they could not find a single trans person with a male partner!!!

Apparently Bullough was uncomfortable with transsexuals or transvestites
who have male partners. This would explain why he was unable to name any
gay transvestites or transsexuals in his 1979 book, and why Coccinelle
is put in the other chapter in the 1993 book. However this is odd in that he worked so well with gay organizations as well as with Virginia Prince. He is even critical of Prince for proclaiming that transvestites are necessarily heterosexual. And yet the omission is plainly there in his books. I suspect somehow the influence of Prince, who apparently also had input into the non-presence of gay transvestites in Harry Benjamin's book and scale.

Photo of Bullough, Prince, and Docter from Docter's book.

In his Preface to Richard Docter’s biography of Virginia Prince Bullough makes the claim – that surprisingly has been ignored in the debate about social construction - that “there is no evidence in Western culture of what might be called a heterosexual transvestite consciousness before the twentieth century”, and probably not before Magnus Hirschfield modified the term 'transvestite' in 1910. Michel Foucault is associated with the claim that there were no homosexuals before that term was coined in 1869, and this claim is wrongly taken to represent the social constructionist position. The historian Rictor Norton has written extensively against social constructionism largely by demonstrating the many homosexuals who existed and had sex before 1869.
What a shame that Bullough made this claim only in a Preface to someone else's book. Could someone pay attention to the claim and either refute it or develop it?
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Vern L. Bullough. Sexual Variance in Society and History. New York: Wiley 1976.

Vern L. Bullough. Homosexuality, a History. New York: New American Library 1979.

There are still some [transsexuals] to-day known to me of that era who were repeatedly turned away, heartbroken and suicidal, and yet who have managed to struggle on trying to do 'the right thing' and maintain the respect of society. For them the magical dream of being a young girl has gone for ever – they never wanted to be old women! They banged at the door and it creaked a little, making it easier for the next, but they themselves never 'made it' through. It is these less fortunate unknowns, not just the well known cases, that transsexuals have to thank to-day for the recognition given to the syndrome." ~Georgina Somerset

“It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.” ~ Noel Coward, Blithe Spirit

"I live for a left that is about freedom, a sexual politics that is about choice." ~ Suzanne Moore

"Respectability politics will always be in conflict with drag, an art form with countercultural subversion at its heart. When these parvenus create new taboos around language, they’re practically begging drag queens and kings to violate these taboos." ~ Andrea James

"If one tells the truth, one is sooner or later to be found out." ~ Oscar Wilde

“There’s a point between what you want people to know about you and what you can’t help people knowing about you.” ~ Diane Arbus.

" I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends" ~ Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook.

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“Too many individuals are that way; what they do not like must be forbidden and punished. Then they are satisfied. I have even met transvestites who dislike (or pretend to dislike) transsexualism so much that they are against estrogen treatment and operation (for reasons of self protection?). There are also transsexuals who dislike transvestites as well as homosexuals. Intolerance can be found in strange quarters.” The Transsexual Phenomenon, p114-5.Harry Benjamin: Part 1 - tuberculosis.Part 2 -rejuvenation.Part 3 -transsexualism to 1966.Part 4 -transsexualism since 1966.------------------------

As TS Eliot famously said: a bad poet borrows, a good poet steals. Actually he did not. What he actually wrote: "One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion." On this basis Virginia Prince is a bad poet. 1978, when Ariadne Kane introduced Prince to the word 'transgender', was early enough that if Prince had had the gumption and the resourcefulness she could have taken the word and made it hers. To do so would have involved using it more than only three or four times. It would have meant using it regularly and with a force that would have withered the competing usages. Prince was not a major intellect: she was making the same specious claims in 2005 as in 1965; and had not the slightest idea how to weld her theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn. Rather she defaced a rich multivalent word, 'transgender', and attempted and failed in her attempt to reduce and narrow it into something quite inauthentic. She threw it into something which has no cohesion.The Life and Times of Virginia PrincePart 1 – Youth and First marriageBibliographyPart II – Second MarriagePart III – Femmiphilic activist Part IV – Full-time LivingPart V – Transgenderist dowagerJargon terms and general comments Did Virginia Prince have Harry Benjamin Syndrome?The Myth That Transgender is a Princian Concept.

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Autogynephilia/HSTS

"Blanchard’s supporters applaud that he has increased the types of transsexual from one to two. His detractors are appalled that the wide variety of transsexuality has been reduced to two stereotypes."

"a) the first usage of the term was in Paris in 1994, where it was a radical and inclusive term b) the Argentinean usage seems to be closer to the Parisian, than to the Goiar-Kearny usage. c) TS-Si and WBT identified with HBS in 2007, but later disassociated. d) no HBS person has published a history of the HBS movement.e) neither Reucher nor Goiar seem to have discussed the other."

"It seem obvious to many that all transsexuals are initially transgendered in that their gender that does not match their gender identity. It is the essence of transgender to change one’s gender and to keep one’s gender identity."

Trans in prison"One would have thought that the prison authorities would have experimented with inmates without a conviction of violence first, and considered other candidates only later. That is of course if they were sincere in wanting a program of surgery and transfer to actually work. However if they hold the program in contempt and want it to fail, then those convicted of violent crimes are ideal inmates to start the program with."